In Hollywood, it’s easier to sell a movie if you can say, “It’s like a new take on ___” and fill in the blank with a box office hit. But the films that get nominated for director are usually the result of a singular vision, one that’s hard to pin down and categorize.
Still, just as many Americans love doing DNA searches for their own family, we can trace the genre roots of this year’s director nominees.
“Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh
An acclaimed British director, who earned his first Oscar nomination for a picture filled with action sequences and memorable quotes, earns another for an intimate autobiographical story about a childhood in which encroaching violence casts a shadow. “Belfast”? Sure, but also John Boorman (“Deliverance”) and “Hope and Glory.”
A few directors have earned nominations by focusing on pre-teen children (“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Hugo”) or on the Troubles (“The Crying Game,” “In the Name of the Father”). But while “Hope and Glory” is set in London during the Blitz, not Ireland a generation later, it maintains the strongest link in tone and subject for Branagh’s latest.
“Drive My Car,” Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Many pundits labeled “Drive My Car” a surprise in the category since it is a foreign-language film. It should not have been a shock: Alfonso Cuarón (“Roma”) and Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”) have both recently won the Oscar.
The bigger surprise may be found in the film’s tone. The protagonist of “Drive My Car” is a director, and Hollywood loves films about theater or movies, but please make it lighter (“The Artist,” “Shakespeare in Love”) or flashier (“All that Jazz”). Oscar certainly honors dark subjects and tragic romances, but heavy films about grieving and loss are rare in the director category. “Terms of Endearment” and “The Descendants” are sad but perhaps too entertaining to be kin, so there are just two nominated films that share obvious genetic material: “Ordinary People” and “Manchester by the Sea.”
“Licorice Pizza,” Paul Thomas Anderson
There has been a resurgence in coming-of-age films recently, with Oscar acknowledging “Juno,” “Boyhood,” “Moonlight” and “Ladybird” in the directing category — all bringing diversity in filmmaking style or subject. “Licorice Pizza” ultimately feels like a throwback to the era when the genre revolved around the growing pains of straight white men.
But coming-of-age movies came of age, Oscar-wise, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, with “The Graduate” winning the director prize and nominations going to “The Last Picture Show” and “American Graffiti.” Incidentally, while “The Graduate” took place less than a half-hour from Anderson’s setting, and while “American Graffiti” takes place in 1962, it was released in 1973, the very year that “Licorice Pizza” immortalizes.
“Power of the Dog,” Jane Campion
For decades, the Western was omnipresent on movie screens but underrepresented on Oscar night. “High Noon,” “Shane” and “Giant” got director nominations but only the latter won, while favorites such as “Red River” or “Rio Bravo” were left out. But when modern directors began reviving, and subverting, the Western, Oscar pulled the trigger, honoring “Dances With Wolves,” “Unforgiven,” “The Revenant” and “No Country for Old Men.”
Campion’s film perhaps bears the most resemblance to Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning “Brokeback Mountain,” exploring the tragic suppression of identity. The Taiwanese Lee, like the New Zealander (and female) Campion, also brought an outsider’s perspective to the American West. But there are also echoes of “There Will Be Blood,” with its dissection of furious but fragile male ego. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Phil, however, does not drink Peter’s milkshake.
“West Side Story,” Steven Spielberg
The Oscars have only rarely sung directors’ songs in the past 40 years — the exceptions were “Chicago” and “La La Land” — so let’s rewind to the golden age. Starting in 1957, Oscar was a regular dance partner for musical directors: nine in 16 years garnered a nomination, including “Mary Poppins,” “The Sound of Music,” and the original “West Side Story” for Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins.
Spielberg’s nomination owes a great debt to the original, of course, from the classic songs to the presence of Rita Moreno. But he breaks from the past by creating more nuanced gender and racial dynamics and by including scenes using Spanish without English subtitles.